The Mason Missile, April 24, 2023

Greetings, Americans! As I keep repeating, and I’ll keep on repeating, May 16 is Primary Election Day in Pennsylvania, and wherever you are, please get out there and vote. There are many powerful forces out there, using abusive laws and physical violence, which have for a long time, and continue to, try to steal from us this most powerful tool of democracy. So many conservative forces, mainly located around the Republican Party—and the Democratic Party has had its sellouts (I’m looking at YOU, Kyrsten Sinema!)—have given up the idea of using the democratic process to persuade voters as to why voters should vote for them, and have used such tricks as gerrymandering of legislative districts, voter ID laws, and laws for placement of drop-off boxes, to try to discourage voters from voting. It’s important to vote and be conscious about the situation in your community—that is WOKE, and it’s not a dirty word, it’s a necessity in the world—after the Republican-dominated Tennessee House of Representatives held votes to remove three Democratic members—Justin Jones, Justin Pierson, and Gloria Johnson—for their support of students in the chamber protesting the legislature’s willful inaction following the shooting and deaths at the Covenant Christian school in Nashville, where three children and three adults were killed. (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/school-shooting-tennessee-leaves-multiple-injured-shooter-dead-officia-rcna76841) And as always, there was the usual “thoughts and prayers” business, where anything, except the availability of military-grade assault rifles on the civilian market, is the cause of the deaths. But these young people in Nashville weren’t having it; they showed greater maturity than the “adults” in the legislature, by walking out and demonstrating in the chamber galleries and hallway. (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/04/kids-are-still-in-body-bags-students-protest-tennessee-house-gop-for-refusing-to-address-gun-violence-after-nashville/) The three members of the House—Jones, Pierson, and Johnson—showed support for the young people; but the republicans ruling the House voted to expel Jones and Pierson, and Johnson escaped expulsion by one vote. (Jones and Pierson are young African-American men, and Johnson is a white woman—don’t tell ME racism had nothing to do about it!) Here’s a fact we must remember; one of the Republican members of the Tennessee House who voted to expel Jones and Pierson, Scotty Campbell, resigned after it was revealed that he sexually harassed a teenaged female intern. (https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/21/us/tennessee-house-rep-scotty-campbell-resigns/index.html) Campbell used the excuse that Jones and Pierson violated the “Decorum” of the House by participating in the demonstration, while Campbell violated the House’s rules on discrimination and harassment. Again, the vote against Jones and Pierson had nothing to do with “decorum” or maintaining order in the chamber, it was about repressing any discussion about firearms running rampant throughout the country. What is it with the Republicans in state legislators and Congress? Are they so isolated in their doctrinal bubble that they’re ignorant of what the people they’re purported to represent really think, about guns, LGBTQ issues, racial issues on our history, for example? Are they so damned secure in their gerrymandered seats that they could count on the suckers and rubes they see voters as to keep voting for them? So corrupted by donations from the oil lobby and the NRA? So ignorant that they believe the raving maniacs at school board meetings, transported to those meetings by “Astroturf” groups paid for by corporate cash, are the REAL America? The battle of the Federal Budget goes on. Economic experts predict severe economic disaster if the federal budget is not approved by summer—the Stock Market falling, unemployment rampant. Congress could agree to raise the debt ceiling, but the Republican-dominated House, under the “Speakership” of Kevin McCarthy, is demanding changes in Medicaid, which is aimed towards older American (like myself, full disclosure), such as greater work requirements. ( https://www.huffpost.com/entry/medicaid-work-requirement_n_6442e175e4b04997b5717a38) They also are aiming at the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, the forerunner to Food Stamps, which helped me a lot too). McCarthy’s plan would be to require recipients of Medicaid—seniors, retirees, people with physical problems—to work 20 hours a week for their benefits; Matt Gaetz, the hair-boy from Florida, is demanding it be 30 hours a week. Again, poor, working-class, and low-income people are the punching bags in discussions about the Budget, and they get lectured about their spending habits and work ethic. But they don’t dare go after the tax cuts that they have accumulated over the years, such as the ones under t----p; and I’m sorry to say, the news media needs to pay more attention to that too. But low-income and working-class people don’t have thousand-dollar an hour lobbyists schmoozing Congress-members, treating them to dinner, taking them to high-end resorts and brothels, it’s the trillion-dollar corporate entities hiring the lobbyists. As for the “work requirements” that seniors and the infirm have to do under McCarthy’s plan—it’s not about instilling a “work ethic” on “those lazy welfare leeches,” as the right-wing pundits would put it—the oil industry, plus savings and loan companies, and mortgage companies, have long been bailed out by taxpayer dollars, thus being the HUGHEST welfare queens; it’s about re-creating a pool of impoverished people who would bring down the wages of people who still have jobs (for now) and preventing them from going out on strike for better wages, since, the capitalists believe, they could grab any dude off the street and they would take whatever the company decides to throw at them. Plus, the social safety net offers a bit of independence and breathing space while the unemployed look for jobs. The conservative propaganda machine bleats about “ending people’s dependence on welfare,” while making working and low-income people dependent on the same billionaire class that traditionally controlled our government, in all its entities, and the media, including in some cases (I’m sorry to say) academia, which million–dollar donations to universities. This is where WE, the working people and ow-income people of America, come in. we must band together to educate ourselves on these issues, and realize the dark-skinned people down the road aren’t our enemies; neither are the same-sex couples, the drag queens reading to kids in the library. Division between us is their main weapon against us, having us freaked out about things other than the corporate classes grip on our government and our nation. We must organize, in the neighborhoods and the worksites, to advance our rights and our well-being. We’ve done it in the past, and we’ll do it again, in the present and on into the future. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! America will be free! Bye!

the Mason Missile, March 27, 2023

Greetings, Americans! I’m taking part in my ward to help and urge people to vote this primary season; in Pennsylvania, the primary election takes place on May 16. I urge everyone to get out there and vote, either by mail or in person. People have fought and died to make sure we have this right, and some reactionary politicians want to take it from us, because we, the American people, don’t accept their agenda, and they know it. If our right to vote is taken from us, how else should we select our public officials? So many politicians on the right have given up on democracy, since they know they can’t count on winning a fair election. An example of this is the event in December 2022 by the New York Young Republicans; Marjorie Taylor-Greene, fascist looney-toon from Georgia, thought it would be cute to say about the January 6 riot-coup, “If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would have been armed.” (https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-armed-insurrection-comments/index.html) As you can see, the crowd got a big hoot out of the “joke.” In this fascist festival, “mainstream” Republican Congress-members broke bread with some of the nation’s most notorious racists; Peter and Lynda Brimelow of VDARE, the aforementioned Steve Bannon, members of the neo-Nazi Freiheitliche party in Austria, members of the neo-Nazi German party Alternativ für Deutschland, and Jack Posobiec, far-right political operative behind the “Pizzagate” lie (https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/jack-posobiec)—and Josh Hammer, opinion editor for Newsweek magazine. (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/12/11/white-nationalists-other-republicans-brace-total-war) SOOO, the neo-fascist right is once more contaminating the political mainstream. A couple of days before Biden’s inauguration, MTG urged trump‘s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, "In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law". (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/marjorie-taylor-greene-martial-law-mark-meadows-text-messages/) Another example of this is the Tweets from Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah); the first one said, “We’re not a democracy,” and the next one said, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity (sic) are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.” (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21507713/mike-lee-democracy-republic-trump-2020) The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has come and gone at National Harbor, Oxon Hill, Maryland; and it was a downer of an event. Over half the seats in the hall were empty, and people were napping and yawning as the speakers spoke their usual inflammatory rhetoric, which has lost its power. Founded in1974, CPAC was the go-to event for conservative activists and Republican politicians, particularly presidential candidates, to see and be seen, and connect with compatible organizations and activists. Now, such wannabe presidential candidates as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and former Vice-President Mike Pence, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (California), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch Mc Connell (Kentucky), avoided that event. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ron-desantis-will-skip-cpac-rcna72537) Now, it’s become a big trump rally for the MAGA crowd. It didn’t attract much of the younger generation to continue the cause into the future; the movement’s media, like Fox News, didn’t attend; activists for anti-abortion work, “free market” fanatics, and small-tax activists, didn’t hold workshops at the conference; and merchandise for sale advertising their favorite causes and bashing their favorite targets—t-shirts, books, caps, coffee mugs, etc.—were absent, and trump-MAGA stuff was on the market. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/06/cpac-vibes-trump-00085568?link_id=5&can_id=c6b214524e142a4cda41a3e4163755a6&source=email-how-not-to-predict-the-2024-election&email_referrer=email_1839369&email_subject=the-vibes-are-off-with-the-republican-party) I’m starting to think the conservatie movement is losing its steam—losing its power and influence. Matt Shlapp, head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), which organizes CPAC every year, has been charged with sexual assault; a young man who worked at Hershel Walker’s staff (for Walker’s Senate run in Georgia) charged Schlapp with groping and “excessively fondling” his sex organs. (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2023/01/male-staffer-sues-matt-schlapp-for-9-million-lawsuit-alleges-sexual-battery-after-aggressively-fondling-groin-area/) This is part of why the conference was so thinly attended; prominent conservatives didn’t buy tickets to the event, at event at bargain prices. (https://www.alternet.org/the-right-wing/matt-schlapp-2659479898/) It’s another case of a homophobe embedded in the closet, with incredible power in his movement, a source for political connections—and, just like an old-time Hollywood mogul, could have his way sexually with young up-and-comers, male or female. That’s what we’re up against—but we’re up to the challenge. We’ve beaten them before, and we’ll keep on beating them. But the work is in organizing our communities and our worksites, and ally with others in doing so. It also means educating yourselves on the REAL issues affecting our communities and our nation—which means preserving our libraries, so we can read the relevant books on these issues (and support our local libraries as well). And of course, VOTE for the candidates we need—maybe YOU can be a candidate? (FYI, the primary election in Pennsylvania will be May 16; thought you should know. You’re welcome.) Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! America will be free! Bye!

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, March 20, 2023

I speak about the upcoming arrest of Donald Trump, and the craven response by the Republican leadership.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason March 13, 2023

I speak about the new generation of Labor activists, and of the latest failures of “free-market” capitalism, such as the train derailment of the Norfolk-Southern line, and the crash of Silicon Valley Bank.

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, March 6, 2023

I speak abut the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, and the continued sinking into fascism it shows.

The Mason Missile, February 26, 2023

Greetings, Americans! The primary elections are coming up, and I’m again urging everyone to get out and vote. Before voting, please listen to the candidates and ask them questions, since they’ll perform works in government that would affect how we live, now and for years to come. They must not be disconnected to the people. I watched parts of President Joe Biden’s State Of The Union address, and also watched the luminaries of the Republican Party, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, make damn fools of themselves; MTG particularly acted up, yelling at Biden, when he bought up the long-term Republican goal of eliminating Social Security and Medicare. (Just so you know, I’m on both of those programs, as are millions of Americans who would face financial disaster without them.) Also, Greene, along with calling Biden “liar” and howling like she was in a poorly-run strip club, wore a fur-trimmed coat inside the chamber. (That’s all she has to offer the public; hysterics, lies, conspiracy theories, and grand-mal tantrums to get the media looking at her, rather than working on the needs of the American people—to such a low has the Republican Party sunk to.) Another freaky thing Taylor-Greene did was screaming “Liar” when Biden accused “some” republicans of wanting to end, for all time, Social Security and Medicare. (https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/mainstream-medias-extensive-reporting-gops-efforts-cut-social-security-and-medicare). (Full disclosure, I’m on both programs, and they have been a big help to me and millions of other Americans.) The Republicans in Congress have threatened to not allow the raising of the debt ceiling unless Social Security and Medicare were damaged in some way, either by raising the eligibility age or attaining less in payments. They say they want to “sunset” the programs, and to vote on them as “discretionary” spending; their long-term goal has been, since the New Deal, to eliminate them altogether. Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah let the cat out of the bag when a video resurfaced of him telling a group, “It would be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots, and get rid of it,” adding that, “Medicare and Medicaid are the same sort and need to be pulled up.” Here is the video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8UxMnrk8qI) https://www.mediamatters.org/social-security/mainstream-medias-extensive-reporting-gops-efforts-cut-social-security-and-medicare) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJKpSUpltE) Of course, the republicans are insulted that they’ve been called out on this, “How DARE you accuse us of destroying Social Security and Medicare?” But the evidence is there. Another Republican Senator, Risk Allen of Georgia, said, “People come up to me, and they actually want to work longer,” which is why he calls for raising the retirement age to 70 years; Ted Cruz of Texas (when he’s not in Cancun) compared Social Security to a “Ponzi scheme.” (https://www.alternet.org/proof-republicans-social-security-medicare/) So here are the receipts on the Republican War on Social Security and Medicare. Social Security and Medicare, however, enjoy overwhelming support from Americans—so why are the MAGAists and other rightists still hell-bent to destroy them? It can only be ideological fanaticism. The Republican MAGAs and their rightist cousins have lived in a doctrinal bubble, assuming without any evidence that the American people are behind them. But so far they’ve given up on that assurance, as shown by the gerrymandering of legislative district to give them an advantage in elections, and the restricting of people’s ability to vote, particularly people of color, through repressive laws and police force. And they distract us with “culture war” (oh, how I hate that phrase!) nonsense like their scare about drag-queens and intelligent discussions about race, gender, gender identity, and sexual preference. Let’s not fall for that crap. The real issue isn’t big-government-small-government—it’s about who the government works for—ALL the people, or an uber-wealthy oligarchic class? Please keep this in mind as we study the issues, and organize for the benefit of our communities. Stay safe, stay strong, and stay together! Slava Ukraini! America will be free! Bye

The Mason Moment with John Oliver Mason, February 20, 2023

I speak about Jewish views on reproductive rights, and the need to defend them.